​Fathers' Engagement with Baby Depends on Mother

When moms are well-prepared for parenthood, fathers less involved

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Fathers’ involvement with their newborns
depends on mothers’ preparation for parenthood, even for fathers who show the
most parenting skills, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that fathers who showed high levels of
intuitive parenting were more involved than other fathers with their infants at
3 months of age – but only if the mothers showed lower levels of intuitive parenting.

Intuitive parenting involves subtle, nonconscious behaviors
-- like cooing and making eye contact with the baby – that have been shown to
stimulate and engage infants.

The researchers used data from the New Parents
Project, a long-term study co-led by Schoppe-Sullivan that is investigating
how dual-earner couples adjust to becoming parents for the first time. In all,
182 couples participated in this study.

All the couples were assessed at their homes during the third
trimester of pregnancy.

As part of the assessment, researchers observed the couples
interacting with a doll. This doll
procedure has been used by these researchers and others to see how expectant
parents might interact with their own baby after birth.

In the videotaped procedure, an assistant playing the role of
a nurse presented the “baby” to each couple. The 5-minute session was separated
into four parts: Each parent-to-be played with the doll alone, then they played
with it together, then they discussed their experience.

Trained researchers then viewed the videotape to look for how
much each parent-to-be showed intuitive parenting behaviors.

Three months after the birth of the baby, the researchers
conducted another assessment of the new parents. As part of this, the parents completed a time
diary in which they reported each and every thing they did for a 24-hour
period. They did this for one workday
and one non-workday.

For this study, the researchers focused on the total number
of minutes the new fathers spent in positive engagement activities with their
infants on the non-workday. These
activities included reading, playing, talking and listening and soothing or
holding the infant.

Results showed that fathers’ positive engagement increased as
their intuitive parenting increased, but only when mothers had shown lower
levels of intuitive parenting.

Schoppe-Sullivan noted that this study involved highly
educated, dual-earner couples and few in which the mother would be staying at
home full-time.

“You might have expected that in these couples especially, we
wouldn’t see these differences between mother and father involvement, but we
still did,” she said.

Study co-author Lauren
Altenburger, a graduate student at Ohio State, said that it is possible
that fathers would take a more active role later.

“Mothers may be more involved right after birth, whereas fathers
may become more involved later on,” Altenburger said.

In general, mothers showed higher levels of intuitive
parenting than fathers did, the findings showed. But there was a lot of overlap and there are
some families in which the fathers are actually more intuitive than the
mothers.

The researchers found that intuitive parenting levels were
related in couples. In other words, when
mothers were highly intuitive, the fathers tended to be, too.

“That suggests couples are actually selecting each other on
their parenting potential,” Schoppe-Sullivan said.

Other co-authors of the study were Claire Kamp Dush,
associate professor of human sciences at Ohio State and co-director of the New
Parents Project; Theresa Settle and Daniel Bower, graduate students; and Jason
Sullivan, a consulting research statistician, all at Ohio State.